Meet the school robotics club taking part in the 'robo-Olympics'

Teams from 190 countries will take part in the event

From south-London, to Central America!

A group of students from a school robotics club in London are heading to Panama City this week to represent Great Britain at an international 'robotics Olympics'.

The team won the UK championships in June after designing and programming a custom robot from scratch, qualifying them for the global championship.

They will be the first comprehensive students to represent Great Britain in the event, and will compete against students from nearly 200 different countries from around the world.

"Doing it with my friends means a lot to me"

Kieran is excited to meet new people from around the world with his friends

Their club, Powercut Robotics, was originally formed by maths teacher Mr Fry, and is named after the time they accidentally caused a school power cut!

Kieran is one member of the team who will be competing this week.

His team have already met up online with the teams from Ethiopia, Nepal, Albania and São Tomé and Príncipe.

He said: "Meeting new people from all around the world is something that I would never have dreamed of when starting robotics as a school.

"Doing it with my friends means a lot to me - and now to get a chance to compete abroad is something that we could never have dreamed of."

Adrian, who's sat next to the robot that made them UK Champions, is proud of his team-mates

Adrian said that he signed up to Mr Fry's robotics club when he joined two years ago.

"In two years, we've come so far. We actually turned up to our first competition and lost quite badly.

"But after that we bounced back and just put everything into it - and then we did really well."

"It was just so incredible - robotics has felt really life-changing", he said.

Adrian hopes to widen access to robotics to let kids from all backgrounds have a go.

He's helped set up a campaign to bring robotics into every school in the country, as only a small number of schools in the UK offer it.

"We want to show that you don't have to be from a high-performing school to do really well. If you try hard enough, you can get to the very top.", he said.

Maths teacher Mr Fry says he set up the club because of the potential it gives young people.

"The robot is almost the smallest part of this, it's the leadership, it's the project-managing, it's all manner of different things."

If you could design a robot, what would it do? Tell us below!